


Just One Yesterday

by Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Angst, Closure, Everything Hurts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I just wanted them to scream at each other, I love them both so I made them both sad, Mostly talking, Pain, Suffering, That's it, They're both sad bastards coping with the loss of people they loved, Whump, post-PG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 05:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus/pseuds/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus
Summary: If heaven’s grief brings hell’s rainThen I’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterdayI want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of wayStill, I’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday.Bartimaeus stumbles upon an old enemy, and sees them in a new light after certain events from the last book.Title and lyrics from a Fall Out Boy song by the same name which sounds pretty sad if taken as from the POV of an immortal.





	Just One Yesterday

I didn’t think that I’d be summoned ever again after the Glass Palace incident – mostly because I didn’t think that I would come out of it alive – but here I was, standing inside a pentacle and glaring daggers at my new master. There wasn’t much to talk about here; a woman in her middle-to-late thirties with a terrible haircut and even worse nasal voice. Still, she was powerful enough to summon me and I couldn’t tear her apart, so I resigned myself to yet another round of humiliating and frankly more than a little depressing errands that followed my new imprisonment.

I was NOT in the mood for existing in the Mortal Plane, not after a certain idiotic brat decided to give his life for me and the rest of London and didn’t allow me to die with him. Very inconsiderate of him, I must say; sticking another blade in my already tired and ruined heart, forcing me to carry his mask just like I carry Ptolemy’s because how else could I honour them? How else could I keep them with me after their lives were extinguished? How else could I live?

Yes, it was very inconsiderate of him, though not as inconsiderate as my mistress’s brilliant idea of punishing me for my eventual disobedience by leaving me in the, how did she say it? “More than capable hands” of another of her slaves. Now, usually I would welcome a bit of a scuffle combined with verbal swashbuckling – it always took my mind off things - but what neither she nor I took into consideration was that my tormentor would be someone I already was familiar with; that always made things awkward, what with the small talk of how we’ve been faring since our last meeting or fighting to the death about something one of us did.*

(*Faquarl, for example, used to be a fellow djinni and a dear frienemy of mine. Half of our reunions tended to end with bloodshed. I wish I could say that I didn’t miss him.)

She summoned me into a small and dark room, with no windows or air vents, the only possible way out I could spot being the door, which she had locked upon leaving.

“I hope that you two will have fun!” she chirped on her way out, giving me a little wave goodbye before the door clicked shut. If not for the bonds placed on me, I would’ve torn her to shreds for such insolence.

Sighing, I looked around the dark space for my tormentor, producing a small Light to chase away the darkness around me. The place was empty on all seven planes, which surprised me, I must say; not many spirits could alter their form beyond the seventh plane, so if there _was_ something in here with me, it was powerful. Or maybe my dear mistress simply tricked me, planting the seeds of paranoia and simply waiting on the other side of the door until I started screaming at nothing? Maybe the real punishment was solitary confinement?

Just as I was beginning to relax, believing that this was indeed the case, there was a whisper right beside my ear, sounding like the void would if it had a voice and almost scaring the life out of me.

“Hello, Bartimaeus.”

I whirled around, eyes wide and magic at the ready, but found nobody. I checked the planes again; nothing aside from the many shadows cast by my Light.

“Very funny,” I called out, conscious that the voice might have been an illusion and that I might as well be talking to myself. “Come out now, I’m not in the mood for playing hide and seek.”

“Your mood has nothing to do with this,” came the reply, bitingly cold breath at the back of my neck.

I jumped, turning around with an Inferno at my fingertips.

Nothing.

Laughter cut through the silence, lilting and sinister… and somewhat familiar. I felt a chill* running down my essence at the familiarity, but couldn’t place it.

(*You know that feeling when you’re walking barefoot on the seashore and accidentally step into something slimy and disgusting? It was like that.)

“Show yourself!” I shouted, growing angrier by the second. I was tired, miserable, hurt, and in the ‘depression’ stage of grief; I was half tempted to throw the Inferno at my feet and burn down everything around me, myself included, and see the silhouette of the other spirit wreathed in flames.

Another chuckle. “Very well, little djinni. Turn that nightlight of yours off and you’ll see me.”

I rolled my eyes.  “I’d only see darkness.”

“Exactly.”

Something in the way they said sent another chill down my spine. Still, I complied, keeping my magic at the ready.

Someone flipped a light switch on, also making me feel like an idiot for not thinking to check for one earlier, and all shadows in the room fled before the light of a single, bare lightbulb… all except for one.

“Oh,” was all I could say as I was gripped by fear so overwhelming that I found myself completely unable to move, caught like a deer in the headlights.

The shadow that stood opposite of me was tall and slightly distorted, limbs just a little too long and fingers just a little too pointy. It grinned down at me, its pitch black face split open by a maw full of long, needle-like teeth. I would describe it further, but I was too terrified to take in any other details, and besides you and I both know exactly what monstrosity was standing before me.

“Hi, Ammet.” I grinned back, tense, and wondered if I could break through the door and run before he tore me apart and ate the pieces. Perhaps if I fired a Detonation at him, I could buy a few seconds as he recovered to try to escape or…

“You cannot escape this room,” he told me, pointing at the door. “It’s fortified against magic and blunt force alike; many have tried. See the scratches?”

I nodded shakily, giving the door a quick once-over on the first few planes, examining the threads of magic woven around it, as well as the deep, desperate claw marks scratched into it. Yeah, not a chance. “The walls?”

“The same, except with iron bars running through them.”

“Ouch.”

“Mhm.”

I sighed, the terror thrashing around in my chest reaching such heights that it looped back to calmness and acceptance that I was trapped in a room I couldn’t escape from with a marid who had about three thousand reasons to either straight up kill or torture _and_ kill me. Not my preferred way to go, but who was I to quibble with the capricious fate, especially if there really was no way out of this drivel? And besides, who knew? Maybe Nathaniel and Ptolemy would be waiting for me on the other side once Ammet finally put me out of my misery?

I sat down, cross-legged in the same manner as Ptolemy sometimes sat as he read, taking a deep breath more out of habit than necessity. I missed the action of breathing, I missed the feeling of blood rushing through my veins. I missed the comfort of being woven through Nathaniel’s bones. I missed Nathaniel.

Dying on my feet would be more like me, an act of bravery and defiance and whatnot, but I was too tired for that sort of thing.

“Go ahead,” I muttered, not even looking up. “End me.”

To my surprise, Ammet sat down in front of me in an identical position, two blank, white eyes looking at me strangely. I half-expected him to lunge at me with that toothy maw of his open and unhinged, but he just stared, frowning a little, as if something about my demeanour confused him.

I rolled my eyes, mildly annoyed at his lack of cooperation. “Not used to your food not putting up a fight?”

He quirked his head to the side, eyes narrowing.

“That too,” he hissed, “but mostly not used to _you_ not putting up a fight.”

Oh yeah, our last meeting was far from a pleasant one, as was the one before it. I _did_ kind of ruin his and his master’s nefarious plan of stealing a ludicrously powerful ring and taking over the world and yadda yadda. You know what happened and I’m not going to shred my tongue by recounting all of it.

“What’s up with you?” he brought his face closer to mine, his aura making my skin crawl. “Where’s that djinni who caused so much trouble back in Jerusalem? Where’s the one who sent the spirits of the Ring to assault me and lock me in an amphora at the bottom of the sea for almost three millennia? I expected more from our final meeting.”

I shrugged, not even bothering to move away. “Sorry for disappointing you. You were probably expecting an epic battle or me cowering in the corner, but I’m too tired for this.”

“Why?”

“None of your business.” Like hell I was gonna tell him about Ptolemy and Nathaniel and doing exactly what past me had yelled at him for. “Letting people down is my thing, baby.”

For a split second, he looked like he was about to strike me, clawed hands tightening into fists, but then his gaze locked on my face. On Ptolemy’s face.

“An interesting guise,” he remarked in an entirely different tone of voice, one I couldn’t decipher the meaning of but which made me intensely uncomfortable once more. “Very detailed. Who was he?”

I narrowed my eyes, my anger flaring up once more. “Nobody of importance,” I lied, shifting before I knew what I was doing and what I was changing into.

“And this one? I like the tie.”

I looked down on myself and saw that I was wearing Nathaniel’s shape, accurate down to the two moles on the top of his right hand, just below the knuckles. A dull, throbbing ache filled my whole being at the ghost of the feeling that tore through me as he dismissed me from his body before breaking the staff and… and…

Ammet watched intently as I desperately tried to keep a straight face despite my inner turmoil. I must have failed because he grinned once more.

“Found yourself another pet, haven’t you?” he asked, and his voice wasn’t exactly a growl, but there was a slight rumble just underneath it. “Two of them, in fact! How interesting.”

My growl, however, was less than subtle, the anger and pain and helplessness that crashed down on me as soon as I appeared on Earth once more, forced to deal with a physical form and emotions that left me when I returned to the Other Place simply overflowing. I didn’t care that he was stronger, that he would torture and/or kill me, I didn’t care about anything.

I stood up and _screamed._

“How dare you?!” If spirits could cry, I knew that I would have tears rolling down Nathaniel’s cheeks. “How dare you call them pets? Animals? Simple mascots kept only for amusement or semblance of companionship? They were the only two people I have ever loved, could ever love!* They were the only to treat me as more than a slave, more than filth one has to scrape off their boots! What the hell do you know about losing someone who meant the whole world to you and having to carry them with you for the rest of eternity?! WHAT. DO. YOU. KNOW?!”

(*I have excluded Kitty from this list only because she’s still alive as far as I know.)

Enraged, I threw an Inferno at him before I knew what I was doing, my anger burning so hot that it turned the flames white as they licked Ammet’s form, doing absolutely no damage because the bastard was stronger than I could ever be. He didn’t even seem to notice them as he stood up to loom above me once more, extinguishing the fire with a wave of his hand.

The look he gave me made me freeze on the spot.

“I know more than you think,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper.

He changed, the form of a shadow melting off of him like ink, exposing dark skin and black clothing, an essence-flail and familiar eyes staring down at me with more agony than I have the words to describe. Once more, I was standing eye to eye with Khaba the Cruel.

Only it wasn’t quite him; his skin was littered with cracks and patches of pitch black void in places which Ammet’s memory was unable to fill. His face was twisted with anguish, fists clenched, whole body shaking.

“I know that pain, believe me,” he growled. “I have felt it ever since you sent me to the bottom of the sea, locked away in darkness and thrashing against the walls of my prison until it hurt too much to stay awake. I have spent thousands of years in this darkness, with nothing left of my master but memories and the knowledge that I failed him, failed to protect him.” A crack split down his cheek, looking almost like a shed tear. “Even those memories had faded, swallowed by the darkness until I was left with mere glimpses of the one who was my entire world.” He gestured at his face as another crack appeared. “No, djinni, you’re the one who doesn’t understand.”

Suddenly, he struck me, his fist connecting with my face hard enough to send me flying backwards and colliding with a wall. I fell to the floor, leaving a considerable indentation.

“What you lost,” I heard him say, voice choked up with the same emotions I was oh so familiar with, “was a crush. How old were they? Fourteen? The one in a suit wouldn’t have been older than eighteen. How many years did you have with them? Two? Three? Five at most, less than a decade altogether. Glimpses, nothing more, embers in comparison to the flame you have extinguished back in Israel.”

It took a while for his words to get past the ringing in my ears, but when they did register, my eyes widened in realisation. _Oh._

I looked up at him, seeing him in a completely new light. For all those years, I took the perfection of Ptolemy’s form for granted, being able to see him in the mirror exactly as he used to be before his tragic venture into the Other Place. I knew every inch of his skin down to a mole because I could see him time and time again whenever I wanted, and my memory was kept fresh with breaks in the Other Place where I didn’t have to worry about forgetting anything because my consciousness was dissolved in the familiar chaos so I had nothing to remember him with.

Now, as I looked at Ammet, standing before me and wearing the broken and half-forgotten face of the one he loved as deeply as I loved Ptolemy, I realised how terrible the fate I had doomed him to really was.

“How long have you known him?” I asked, getting up unsteadily to my feet and brushing plaster off Nathaniel’s suit.

Ammet opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated.

“I… I don’t remember,” he replied, looking away. “Twenty years? Thirty? He was a child when he first summoned me back in Karnak’s catacombs, but I cannot tell you more.”

Thirty years. I imagined what it would be like if I had this amount of time with Ptolemy or Nathaniel; if I got to see them reach adulthood, watch them grow and flourish, adjust my guise to their new height or laugh at the way their voices cracked before the mutation finally hit. I thought about all the moments we could’ve shared, the memories we could’ve made, or how our bonds could have grown and deepened as time went by. We could’ve had so much; compared to so much time, the two years I had with Ptolemy was nothing.

“Mourning two years is easier than mourning twenty,” Ammet’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. He didn’t sound angry anymore, but I could sense that his calm voice hid an undercurrent of hostility. “What you’re carrying with you are idolised versions of those you loved. Was that Egyptian child as sweet and kind as you remember? Would this kindness still be there after five or ten years? Would his naivety give way to wisdom? Would you still love the person he would have become after those ten years? Would your love persevere through trials thrown at you by time? Would it grow stronger, or crash and burn?”

“I…” I really didn’t have much, come to think of it; two years with Ptolemy and barely seven with Nathaniel. What I’ve lost could have become that what Ammet used to have, what I was stupid enough to take away from him.

Gods, if it hurt me now, I didn’t even want to imagine the burden _he_ had to carry.

So many treasured memories, stolen away by the darkness I had entrapped him in.

“I’m sorry,” was I could say.

He barked out a laugh, incredulous. Crossing the room with a few strides he picked me up by my throat and slammed against the wall. Repeatedly.

“You’re sorry?” he laughed. “You’re _sorry?_ Now that you’ve caught a glimpse of what it feels, you’re suddenly sorry for what you’ve done? You haven't only taken my freedom back then. You took away my access to the Other Place, took away the opportunity for me to heal, to forget my grief for even a few blessed moments.” He slammed me against the wall a couple more times until I could feel the exposed iron bars burning into my back. His voice was rising. “You left me to an eternity of sorrow and having to watch the face of my master, my Khaba disappear into the darkness as, piece by piece, my memories were claimed by oblivion. You had tasks to distract yourself from the sorrow. You had rests in the Other Place which allowed you to exist without that pain for some time. You had mirrors to watch the face of the one you loved in so that you would never forget even the tiniest of details."

His voice cracked, and I’ve only noticed that Khaba’s eyes were completely black, whites and all, as if Ammet couldn’t remember what they looked like either.

"Me? I had nothing!” He threw me down to the ground, shadows whipping and writhing around him. His form glitched a couple of times, spawning additional eyes and teeth as it struggled to contain his anger. And, with a voice so full of pain that it felt like it would tear me apart but sounding just a little like I think Khaba’s had sounded, he screamed:

"YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!"

The room was quiet, save for Ammet’s heavy breathing that sometimes seemed to resemble sobs. I stared up at him, essence leaking from my many wounds. In some weird, twisted way, we were two of a kind; cursed to carry the burden of having loved and lost and carrying the memories of those we cared about more than we cared about ourselves. If not for our history, I think I could’ve placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"I'd give the rest of my immortal life to see him again," he whispered, shoulders dropping as if in exhaustion or, perhaps, resignation. "Just for a moment. Even just to hear him scold me for something."

I looked up at him, frowning. "He ever scolded you?" From what I remembered about the two of them, Ammet was pretty good at following orders.

He shrugged, looking away. "I don't remember. If so, much less than I deserved, but he might have been horrible to me and I could be none the wiser; I can only retain the happy times. Do you ever think about how many things we find ourselves forgetting without even noticing?"

Ah yes, I sometimes found myself worrying about this on my bad days: was Ptolemy really as kind as I remember him? Was he so eager to help people from the goodness of his heart, or only to make them leave him to his studies? Did he truly care about me, or was I little more than a specimen to be studied? Rose-tinted glasses are a hell of a filter.

"I try not to think about it," I admitted, steadying myself against what was left of the wall as I tried to get to my feet. “Listen, I’m not sorry for what I did, but I’m sorry that I had to do it, and that I had doomed you to my fate.”

“I don't blame you,” he replied, even more quietly, then unceremoniously grabbed me by the arm and helped me up. His touch was cold as ice, but I didn’t flinch away. "We're all villains in somebody else's stories. I guess I was one in yours."

I nodded. "And I, in yours."

We stood there in strangely comfortable silence for a couple of moments. Ammet shifted back into his shadow form, seeming to relax a bit more as if it was the shape he was most comfortable in, perhaps like Ptolemy's was to me. 

All of a sudden, he chuckled, as if recalling a joke. It was an unsettling sound, I had to admit.

"For all those years I wanted to kill you, make you pay for everything you’ve done." He smiled bitterly, patting my shoulder and sending pain coursing through my veins when his hand connected with the bruised and torn flesh there. "But I don’t think I even want to do it now." There was an unspoken addition there, one I could hear in the silence around us even though he didn't voice it.

_"I just want him back."_

I winced, staggering forward a little. “Merciful, aren’t you?” I muttered through gritted teeth.

He shook his head. “Letting you live and deal with the pain would be worse than even the worst torture I know.”

“You know, I thought as much.” I looked up at him with a crooked smile, and he wore the same expression Faquarl did just before Nathaniel and I killed him. He looked tired, a spirit too ancient for this world. His eyes asked for something I knew very well, which I sometimes caught myself craving as well when my dark thoughts got the best of me.

It would take a lot of power, but the proximity would help. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and my suspicions were confirmed when he made no move to shrug it off.

“You didn’t change much in those three thousand years,” I told him, “but I know I did, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned since our last meeting, it’s mercy.”

“What do you think happens to us after we die?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I hope that you see each other again; out of all the terrible things I wish on you, the one you deserve the most is him."

With that, I poured all my magic into a single Convulsion.

Now, marids usually shrug off most of the magic that lesser spirits like me are capable of, but I imagine that he didn’t get many chances to regenerate since whenever he was liberated, and even the smallest thing could kill you if you didn’t try to fight it.

Ammet gave me one last grateful smile before the Convulsion tore him apart, his whispered “thank you” reaching my ears even through the roar of the spell going off.

As I watched wisps of shadow fall around me like the opposite of snow, I thought about the terrible spirit who hurt and imprisoned me, chased me all the way from Jerusalem to the Great Sea. I then thought about what he had become thanks to me. Yes, stopping him and Khaba had saved countless of lives and probably changed history for the better, but I still couldn’t get the look in his eyes, his agonised shriek - _"You took everything from me!"_ \- out of my memory. If I had known that this is what it feels like, I would've just killed him then and there; I wouldn't wish this kind of pain on even my worst enemy.

Would I become the same, a shadow of my former self*, burdened with grief I couldn’t let go of even if I wanted to?

(*Quite an ironic term because I doubt that this is whose shadow Ammet wanted to be.)

I shook these thoughts away, striding towards the door. No matter, pondering such things would not grant me freedom. In my hand, I gripped one of the iron bars I had torn out of the wall beforehand. It burnt my hand, but only until I jammed it into the keyhole, breaking the locking mechanism and kicking the door open.

I still had a life to live, even if every moment of it was filled with pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I think they're both equally screwed over, what with Bart having lost two people instead of one, but Ammet having more memories to mourn. I don't think they should make their grief a competition, but thousands of years of loneliness and bitterness do make you say things you don't mean.


End file.
